


Heart in Danger

by lilacsigil



Category: Original Work
Genre: Australia, F/F, Monster Hunters, Shapeshifting, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 09:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21407641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsigil/pseuds/lilacsigil
Summary: Jenelle's mum hunts illegal shapeshifters for a living, and Jenelle has never questioned that. Once she moves to Melbourne for university, though, she meets new people (such as her girlfriend Arki) and starts to question what she's always thought to be true.
Relationships: Adorable Monstergirl/Hunter Who Ignores Warnings Because She’s Cute, Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2019





	Heart in Danger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smarky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smarky/gifts).

Jenelle's mother always warned her: never trust a shifter. 

"Not even Aunt Sophie?" Her late father's sister was a swan shifter, properly registered. 

"Definitely not Aunt Sophie. Never around the full moon, and I don't want you around her alone until you're an adult."

Aunt Sophie had never objected to these rules, but when Jenelle was a kid, she hadn't thought anything of it: after all, everyone did what her mother said. But as she got older, her mum took more hunting trips away, leaving Jenelle home alone overnight or for a few days, and when something bad inevitably happened – a car crashed into a pole on the main road and the power went out all down the street – Jenelle automatically called Aunt Sophie. 

"Can I stay at your place? The power's out here and it's dark and getting cold. I have to do my homework," she added, thinking that any sensible adult would agree to that. 

"I'll call your mother first, to see if it's okay," Sophie said, but Jenelle's mother was out of reach, so Sophie came anyway. 

They drove to Sophie's house in her cute little Kia and Jenelle felt instantly at home, even though it was only the two of them this time. Sophie's house had been Jenelle's grandmother's house before, and there were lots of photos of Jenelle's dad around. Sophie fussed over her and sat her down near the heater in the living room to warm up, a plaid blanket over her knees.

"There you go, all cosy. I've left messages for Annie, so she knows where you are. She'll probably want to come pick you up ASAP."

"I don't mind staying!" Jenelle said. "As long as you can drop me at school in the morning? The bus won't go past here."

Sophie looked nervous. "Yes, well, it's not what your mother would prefer. Listen, when you've warmed up properly, I need to show you something downstairs." Sophie's house was built into a hill, and was split level. 

"Downstairs?"

"Yes. I'll be sleeping down there tonight."

Jenelle got up. "Oh, I'm sorry, Aunt Sophie, I thought you had a guest room, and I could stay there. I didn't mean to throw you out of your bed!" Jenelle knew for sure that Aunt Sophie had a guest room, but maybe it was super messy right now. Jenelle certainly subscribed to the "close the door" theory of room tidying herself. 

"I do have a guest room, sweetie, but your mum would never forgive me if I fell asleep with you in the house four days out from the full moon."

"Oh, you wouldn't hurt me," Jenelle declared with the confidence of ignorance.

"I would never forgive myself," Sophie added, folding her arms. "Now, come with me."

They went through the kitchen and down the stairs to the basement. It wasn't dark and filled with cobwebbed boxes like the spare room at Jenelle's house: it was well-lit, clean and tidy, with a sturdy bed, books, and a TV fixed high up on the wall. There was a toilet and shower in one corner, complete with tiled floor. The only thing out of place was the cardboard box the TV had come in, sitting open and filled with shredded newspaper. 

"What's that for?" Jenelle asked, pointing. 

"Don't point, Jen, it's rude," Sophie told her automatically, then sighed. "It's a nesting box. When I transform, it's more…natural to sit in that than anywhere else. And I don't want to be cleaning swan poop off my bed if I don't have to."

Jenelle giggled, but Sophie was deadly serious. "Jenelle. When it's a full moon and I transform, there's very little 'me' there. I don't get a choice about pooping on the bed, and I don't get a choice about attacking people. It's my responsibility to stay in here, alone." 

Frowning, Jenelle poked at the box with her toe. "But you hear about shifters doing crimes all the time, on the news. They're not just animals. And I know mum hunts unauthorised shifters and other bad people. Not shifters like you."

Sophie gave her a hug. "Jenelle, it's great that you think the best of me, but being a registered shifter doesn't suddenly make the threat go away. A shifter can change any time and have control over his or her actions, but the closer it is to the full moon, the more animalistic we become. And on the full moon itself, well, I can't stop myself changing, and I have no memory of my human form."

Jenelle wriggled out of the hug. "Sure, but it's not the full moon now."

"It's not yet, but having someone else in my house when I'm asleep? The animal part of my brain might feel threatened, and change. My swan form can't escape the house, but it could find you, Jen. It's safer if I'm locked in here, okay?"

Jenelle thought about that. She knew how big and fierce regular swans were, let alone a shifter swan. She wouldn't want to have to fight one, even with eight years of karate lessons under her belt. "Is that why shifter kids have to go to a different school?"

"Yeah. There's not so many shifter kids now that they invented the vaccine for pregnant shifter women, but kids don't have great control over their emotions at the best of times, and it would be awful for one to shift and bite someone without meaning to."

"Oh! I thought it was to protect the shifter kids from bullying and stuff. But that makes more sense."

"Well, that too," Sophie said, with a grimace. "Kids enjoy being mean to anyone who's different."

Jenelle nodded, thinking of the entire year after her dad died when her class nicknamed her "Orphan", just to make her cry. Fortunately they seemed to have forgotten all about it by the next year. 

Sophie stood up. "Come on, sweetie, let me show you how the locks on the door work."

Jenelle couldn't say she slept well that night, especially when she heard banging and thumping from downstairs, but she still didn't entirely believe that Aunt Sophie would hurt her. The next morning, when she let Sophie out and Sophie took her to McDonalds for breakfast on the way to school, it all seemed like a bad dream washed away by sunlight. 

After that, Jenelle's mum let her stay with Aunt Sophie whenever she wanted, but never at the full moon, and always with Aunt Sophie locked in the basement overnight. Jenelle felt guilty about that, and didn't call on her too often, just in case Sophie got sick of the basement and sick of Jenelle. She didn't want to admit it to her mum, but she knew her mum's job was dangerous, and apart from Aunt Sophie, if something happened to her mum like it had to her dad, Jenelle would have nobody. 

By the time Jenelle went to university to study nursing, her mother was no longer an active hunter but employed as an advisor by an international security firm. She had to go to the city occasionally for meetings, but her wages were not only better but far more regular. When Jenelle expressed her relief, Annie said that she wouldn't have got the job without twenty years as a hunter behind her. Jenelle couldn't be bothered starting the old argument about whether she should have hunted in the first place, or kept going after Jenelle's dad died, so she merely shrugged and kept packing up her things ready to go. 

Aunt Sophie gave her the old Kia as a graduation present, which Jenelle truly appreciated. She packed it full of her things and drove to Melbourne alone, despite her mother's offer to take her in the big ute which could carry a lot more in the tray. 

"Let her be independent," Jenelle overheard Aunt Sophie say, "Better than the way you left home – you've left the door open for Jen to come back any time she wants." 

"I know, I know," Annie replied, and Jenelle could swear that she sounded like she'd been crying, except that her mum never cried, not even when a kick from a kangaroo shifter had broken her leg in five places. "But I'm going to miss her so much."

Jenelle heroically restrained herself from saying that her mum should have been home more often, then. 

"Home" in Melbourne was a tiny student flat in a building full of them, with communal spaces on every floor and great Wi-Fi. They were meant to get to know at least the students on their own floor, and Jenelle was pleased to find that she was on an all-female floor. Not that she minded guys, particularly, but being the only teenage lesbian in a country town had got her some experimental kisses from straight girls and not a whole lot else. The city was a brand new opportunity. Unfortunately the other two nursing students on her floor were a pair of Muslim girls from Malaysia who were polite but distant to a loud-voiced white girl; Jenelle, who mostly wore flannel shirts, t-shirts and jeans, was uncertain about how to compliment their pretty floral dresses and pastel headscarves.

Jenelle resolved to keep trying and at the end of her first week, happily attended a party for the whole building. She attached a nametag that said JENELLE FOURTH FLOOR 18+ and scored a beer from the open bar. The first person she saw with a FOURTH FLOOR tag was a girl who hadn't been at the last meet and greet, so Jenelle wandered over. 

"Hi! I'm Jenelle, we're on the same floor."

The girl, ARKI FOURTH FLOOR 18+, was plump and pale, with blonde hair so fine Jenelle could see her pink scalp through it. But she wore jeans and a plain t-shirt, so Jenelle at least felt they had something in common.

"Oh, hi! I only got here yesterday, so I haven't really met anyone yet." Arki took a lemonade from the bar, despite her 18+ tag that would let her drink alcohol, and sipped it nervously. "I think we're in people's way here."

They shuffled away from the bar towards the windows, where Arki's thin hair looked like a soft halo around her head. 

"So where are you from? You'll have nearly a week of classes to catch up on."

"Perth," Arki said. "I got offered a place in Media Studies late, when someone else deferred, so it took a couple of days to get everything organised."

"Oh cool! I'm doing Nursing. I'm not from Melbourne either, but not as far as Perth." Jenelle's mind automatically counted days since the full moon: three days. If Arki were a shifter, she would have been incapacitated earlier in the week. She shook her head. She wasn't here to think about everyone that way. She didn't have to keep track of her mother's hunts anymore. "I'd offer to show you around but I don't know where the Media Studies department is. I've got class at 9 on Monday if you want to see which tram to catch, though?"

Arki smiled and honestly looked somewhat relieved. "That would be great! I've only ever been on the tourist tram in Perth, and that only goes on one route. The timetables look so complicated here!" 

They swapped phone numbers, and although Jenelle made sure to chat to every girl in the room and a good number of the guys, she kept drifting back to Arki, who stood shyly in the corner and let people come to her. 

Jenelle spent the weekend catching up on study and joining the university karate club. Even if she wasn't going to use her skills for hunting monsters, she enjoyed the sport and it was great to spar against new people. Although they texted to organise a time to meet up, she didn't see Arki again until Monday morning.

"Hey!" Arki called out across the lobby. She was wearing a dress today, bright blue with big black squiggles on it. If Jenelle wore it, she was sure she'd get asked if she got it from the op shop, but Arki had teamed it with gold sneakers and big sunglasses, and looked very cool. 

"Your dress is great," Jenelle told her, awkwardly.

"Oh, thanks! It's cotton, I really feel the heat, even if Melbourne's not as hot as Perth." 

"The hottest weather's already past, don't worry," Jenelle said, kicking herself for talking about the weather with a cute girl. Or maybe she shouldn't be kicking herself, because at least they were having a conversation?

She escorted Arki to the tram stop, and showed her which of the trams would take her to university, as Arki looked flustered and turned pink in the bright early morning sun. Despite Jenelle only learning all this a week ago, she felt very calm and confident to being able to help someone else. The crowds that had bothered her then seemed unimportant now. She took Arki by the elbow to guide her onto the tram, and her hand felt incredibly warm on Arki's cool, pale skin. The tram was packed at rush hour, and they had to stand very close to grab onto the same pole; Arki put her hand over Jenelle's, and Jenelle shook her hair forward a bit so that Arki wouldn't see if she was blushing. 

The tram disgorged them and a dozen other students in front of the university, but Arki still stayed right next to Jenelle. 

"Are you okay from here?" Jenelle asked, though she didn't want Arki to actually leave. 

Arki brought up a map on her phone. "Oh, yes, I see where I have to go! That tall building, over there. Thanks so much, Jenelle! What time do you have a break? We could meet up for lunch, maybe?"

Jenelle grinned widely. Arki wasn't sick of her already! "Sure, I'd love to. I have an hour from 12 to 1, then I have labs all afternoon."

"Me too! Well, not the labs. But I have a lunch break then. Cool, I'll text you!" With a wave, she moved off into the crowd and Jenelle quickly lost track of her among the taller students. 

"Hey, Jenelle? Are you lost?" It was Fay, one of the Malaysian students from her floor. "We've got the lecture this morning, then labs later."

"No, I'm good! Just lost in thought, I guess." She followed Fay out of the main path and towards their faculty. 

That night, Jenelle's mum texted to see if she was free for a phone call. 

"Hi, Mum! You'll be proud, I finished a job application!"

"I am proud! Night filling at the supermarket again?"

"Yeah! It fits my hours, and say thanks to Aunt Sophie for the car, because the job ends after the trams stop."

"I will. Now, listen, I've managed to pull a few strings and find out that there's two shifters registered at your address."

"Mum! You're not allowed to do that!"

"Forewarned is forearmed, Jenelle. Living out of home for the first time is a big upheaval for a lot of kids – if they leave it too late to make it to one of the centres, there could be major problems."

"No way, the Department will come pick them up if they haven't checked in."

"That's true in a small town, Jenelle, but you're in the city now and the numbers are a lot greater. If they have to chase down someone earlier in the evening they could be running behind and-"

"Come on, Mum, you're just making up things to worry about, now."

"Did you put that extra lock I gave you on the inside of your door?"

"Yes, mum." Jenelle was concerned about it, since it specifically said in the regulations that she couldn't do that, but she'd rather face down the building manager than her mum any day.

"Good girl. Now, there's two shifters in your building. Robert Leung, on the second floor, he's a dog shifter. He was bitten as a child, before the prophylactic medications were much good, but at least he's not from a shifter family."

"Okay," Jenelle said, resigned to her mum telling her the poor guy's entire life story. Her mum was right about the family thing: shifter families were often very proud of their heritage and resisted a lot of the control methods that had been instituted in the 80s. Even now they were the ones lobbying for changes and holding protests. Most of the people who'd been bitten and infected like this Robert guy were understandably a lot more cautious.

"So he goes to the centre at the Alfred Hospital. Well-managed, very accountable, I've met the doctor who runs the place."

"Okay, great. What about the other one?"

"Now, I'm more worried about this one," her mum said, "Since she's on your floor."

Jenelle's phone slipped as her fingers went loose. It wasn't Arki, surely? She was new in from Perth, not a shifter.

"Her name is Mia Delancey-" and Jenelle didn't hear the rest in sheer relief. She caught up before her mum finished.

"Oh, yeah, I've met her. Tall, freckly. I think she's doing science? Some kind of science."

"Horse shifters aren't usually too much of a threat – they'd rather run than fight – but make sure you never end up in a confined space with her, okay? Not even the lift."

"Sure, Mum. I usually use the stairs anyway, unless I'm carrying too much stuff. The lift is so slow."

"That's the way. Now, of course, that doesn't rule out unregistered shifters…"

"You see unregistered shifters everywhere, Mum! It's your job and it kept you alive and stuff, but I'm not checking out every single person in the building for signs!"

Annie sighed. "Okay, I know, I know. But keep an eye out when the next full moon gets close, won't you?"

"I will. After all the training you made me do, I probably can't stop myself keeping an eye out!"

Jenelle got the night fill job at the supermarket, and, just as she'd told her mum, she couldn't help but check the roster to see who regularly had the full moon off. Only one: a weird older guy who talked too loudly and Jenelle and the other young staff avoided anyway. The job was boring but easy, and the night shift wages kept Jenelle in enough cash to avoid the ramen noodle diet and even to go out every now and then.

"Hey, Arki!" Jenelle asked one morning, waiting for the tram, "One of the guys I work with at the supermarket gave me two tickets to see his band play. They're probably terrible, but do you want to come? It's at a pub."

"Will they mind if I don't drink?"

"Unless we're the only two who show up, I doubt anyone will notice."

"Then sure! Terrible live music is fun! Actually, my cousin Kyla was in a couple of bands. She had a great voice, but she was terrible at remembering lyrics, so they'd always break up in the end."

"Really?" This was the first time Arki had mentioned anything about her family.

"Yeah, she'd have the chorus right, but she'd only sing the first verse over and over! I made her some lyrics sheets to tape to the floor but it didn't help much. I think she spaced out when she got up there."

"That was nice of you, though! Do any of your family live over here or are they all in Perth?"

"My cousin died last year."

Jenelle flinched. "I'm so sorry."

Arki blinked a few times, but didn't seem angry at Jenelle. "It's okay. They don't all live actually in Perth, but they do all live in Western Australia, so they're all pretty far from here. But I don't see your family here either?"

"We're from up near Echuca, so it's a fair drive. But my mum's coming to the city for a meeting the week after next. She'll take me out to lunch or tea, depending on her schedule, would you like to come?"

Arki looked worried. "Oh, no, I don't think so. It'll be the first time you've seen her in weeks, I don't want to be in the way."

"That's okay, she won't mind!" Jenelle was pretty sure her mum would be pleased to see she'd made a friend, and it wasn't as if they would be dining out anywhere expensive. 

Arki shook her head, and Jenelle guessed that was pretty fair, since Jenelle had just reminded her about her cousin dying. 

Later, while they were all waiting for an experiment to finish in the chem lab, Jenelle googled Arki's cousin on her phone. Kyla was more of a honey blonde, and taller than Arki, but Jenelle could see the resemblance even in the glam, Instafiltered photo they'd used to illustrate the article. She'd died with her boyfriend in a car crash during a police chase, in a stolen car. Jenelle glanced at the date: one day before the full moon. Erratic behaviour. But her boyfriend had been the driver, so that said nothing about Kyla, or Arki. Poor Arki, that must have sucked. Jenelle remembered when her dad died – he'd been a paramedic, which was meant to be the safe job compared to her mum's – and the absolute shock and disbelief that he was gone. 

"I really am sorry about your cousin," she said to Arki later, making dinner in the communal kitchen downstairs. "My dad died when I was a kid and I always hated it when I had to talk about it."

"It's okay, but I don't want to talk about her," Arki said with a watery smile. 

"No problem. Sorry," Jenelle told her and that was the end of it. She can't have been too mad about it, because they kissed for the first time at the genuinely terrible gig, and then held hands until Jenelle needed a hand to change the gears of the Kia on their way home.

When Jenelle's mum came to visit, Jenelle didn't ask Arki along, but they met briefly anyway. 

Jenelle was showing her mum her – suddenly tidied – bedroom and study desk when Arki popped around the door. 

"Hey, Jenelle, do you have – Oh!"

"Hi, Arki, this is my mum."

"Call me Annie, please," her mum said, offering her an outstretched hand past Jenelle.

Arki looked completely flustered. "No, I'm just going, sorry, I didn't mean to – bye!" and dashed back out the door, closing it firmly behind her.

"So that's the mysterious Arki!" 

"She's not mysterious, she's shy, okay? I told you she wasn't coming with us for tea."

Annie started towards the door. "I'll invite her, I want to meet your friends here."

Jenelle threw herself in the way. "No, Mum! Stop it! She doesn't have to come. Besides, we'll be catching up and it will be boring for Arki."

"Oh, all right. It's strange to see you around all these people I've never met, but I guess that's growing up in the country for you."

"Yes! And it's a total relief to go to class with people who don't remember I that time I picked my nose and showed the teacher my booger when I was four!" 

Both of them laughed, and Annie didn't try to invite Arki again. They went to a pasta place for dinner, and it was good to catch up. Although Jenelle still had everyone on Facebook, that wasn't where the best gossip was, and her mum didn't use Facebook at all.

"So it turned out that he was a skink shifter, and he'd slipped inside in somebody's bag!" her mum laughed.

"Really? I didn't think shifters got smaller than maybe a rat."

"Not so much here, but there's reports from overseas of spider shifters and yes, very small lizards and rodents. Spider shifters aren't great. Being an arachnid does weird things to your brain."

Jenelle shrugged. "Aunt Sophie shifts into a bird, and that's a long way from a human."

"Maybe there's something about the size, as well. But we caught the guy, so no more problems. So how's class going?"

"Pretty good! There's a lot of science-y type stuff right now, so I'm looking forward to when we actually see patients in hospital." Jenelle made a face. "I can't believe how much I forgot about how to study in the summer holidays!"

"I'm sure you'll pick it up again, Jen. University wasn't for me, but you did fine at school, and I know you have your heart set on being a nurse. Your dad was the same – he slogged through all the technical stuff so that he could get out there and work on real people."

"Thanks, Mum," Jenelle said. Her dad wasn't a frequent topic of conversation, so it was fortifying to hear something personal about him. 

The full moon was a week after that, and, to Jenelle's annoyance, so was the first round of tests in most subjects, so everyone was jittery. It was impossible to tell if anyone was getting antsy because they were going to shift, or because it was test time. Plus, she had to study for her own tests and have all her lab reports written up. Arki had a website design project to finish, so Jenelle spent a good amount of her study time stretched out on Arki's bed with her tablet, while Arki crankily ironed the errors out of her website then got Jenelle to come click on things. The best bits, of course, were the kiss breaks. Arki was pretty shy about taking any clothes off, but Jenelle wasn't bothered. Arki's mouth was salty and sweet, and she loved having Jenelle lie on top of her and kiss her, and Jenelle could have done that for hours, if not for the study schedule.

The last day of tests – Jenelle had three, and Arki only had to finish and present her project – was the Thursday of the full moon. Jenelle thought she'd done okay, and had only left a few questions blank, and made it to the student flats around four. Mia Delancey, the girl identified as a horse shifter, was pacing in the lobby, looking anxious. 

"Hi," Jenelle said, but kept a safe distance as she moved towards the stairs. 

"I'm just waiting for an Uber," Mia replied quickly, with a fake laugh. 

"Hope it arrives soon!" Jenelle did hope that, but mostly because she would prefer not to be around a shifter four hours before moonrise. Her bedroom overlooked the front of the building, so she sat on her bed looking out the window and watched Mia climb into an Uber a few minutes later. Her registered shifting zone was in Flemington, in underground pens by the racetrack, which only allowed herbivore shifters. Jenelle vaguely remembered some controversy about that a few years ago, when a herbivore-only zone refused to accommodate a rat shifter in an emergency, but her mum mustn't be worried about Mia's choice or she would have told Jenelle about it. Robert Leung appeared a few minutes later, and jumped on a tram heading towards the Alfred Hospital. Good. They were both out of the building in plenty of time. 

There was a knock on Jenelle's door. 

"Arki?" she called out.

"No, it's Fay and Amina from down the hall." The other nursing students. 

"Oh, come in!" Jenelle quickly unlocked her door and let them in. 

"We're having a post-study party for the nursing students downstairs, if you'd like to come. It starts at six," Fay said. 

"Oh cool, sure!" Jenelle could do with a bit of unwinding after this week.

"Alcohol-free," Amina added. "Bring some snacks, okay? Halal if you have them, but not everyone there will be a Muslim, so that's okay if it's not. We only need to know if the food is or isn't okay for us."

Jenelle hadn't known anyone Muslim before she came here. She reached into the storage container under her bed and pulled out a giant bag of just-out-of-date chips she'd got from her supermarket job for free. "Are these okay?"

Amina took the packet and looked closely at the details. "Yes, they're halal certified. Great! Bring these!" 

"Okay, see you there!" 

Just before six, she knocked on Arki's door. "Hey, Arki, you want to come to a party?"

There was no answer. Jenelle tried the door and it was unlocked. "Arki?"

She wasn't there. Maybe she'd got held up at uni. Jenelle fired off a text and quickly got one in return. 

_Still at uni. Sorry! Have fun!_

Okay, no big deal then, but Jenelle couldn't get the pulse of the full moon out of her head. It had always meant danger, her mother going away, Aunt Sophie locked in the basement, and Jenelle was attuned to it almost as much as a shifter was. 

She went down to the common room for the party with the other nursing students, but even though Fay and Amina had catered well, and there were plenty of people she liked from class there, Jenelle felt unsettled. She texted Arki again at six thirty, to a similar answer. 

_I can come get you when you're done?_ Jenelle asked her. 

_No, thanks. There's a presentation, don't know when it will be over_ Arki replied. 

By seven, Jenelle couldn't stand talking about which questions people thought they had got wrong for another minute. She took a last piece of the insanely delicious pistachio baklava that someone had brought, thanked Fay and Amina, and headed out the door. 

Amina caught her arm, and her bespectacled gaze was an assessment. "Are you okay, Jenelle?" 

"I'm fine. I have to go pick up my girlfriend. She shouldn't be out by herself tonight."

"She definitely shouldn't," Amina agreed, and let go. 

So Amina had the full moon on her mind, too, Jenelle thought as she got into the Kia and set off towards the university. Walking would have been nearly as fast, but it was a bad night to be out on the street. The Kia might be tiny, but it would stand up to a shifter attack, at least for a little while. 

There were plenty of people around the media studies centre, and Jenelle breathed a sigh of relief. It must be a late-running presentation after all. When she got closer to the doors, she realised that two students were there taking tickets. 

"Sorry, what's on tonight?" Jenelle asked a random woman. "I was going to get my stuff from the classroom."

"Oh, you should stay, the tickets are only eight dollars for students! It's an experimental film series about glacier formation!"

"Cool!" Jenelle replied, before she realised the pun. The woman laughed and moved forward to buy a ticket. When Jenelle reached the doors, she asked one of the students there, "Hey, are there any first year classes still running?"

"Nah, they finished not long ago. Professor Cheng had to hurry them up so we had time to set up the screen. You buying a ticket? Five bucks for students."

"No thanks, I was just looking for someone." Jenelle hurried towards the main road. If Arki's class had finished, maybe she was heading back now?

Finally, she spotted Arki's green and white striped t-shirt in the distance. She was getting on a tram and Jenelle relaxed until she realised that if she could see Arki from this side of the road, it meant she was catching a tram away from their apartments. Jenelle put on a sprint, but the tram dinged and pulled away long before she made it to the footpath. 

Trams weren't fast compared to a car, she thought! Jenelle dashed over to the Kia at top speed, and jumped in. She checked the tram route. It was a 16, meaning it would go right through the city and then on to St Kilda beach and Kew. She had no idea why Arki would be heading to St Kilda, especially at night. It wasn't the safest of places even in the daytime. And who would she know in wealthy Kew?

There were the usual night roadworks in the city, and Jenelle was starting to sweat at the constant stops until she got onto St Kilda Road. She zipped past the Alfred Hospital, hoping Arki hadn't got off there to lock herself up in their shifting facility. If she had at least she'd be safe. Jenelle had never been out on a full moon night before, and she felt the weight of the rising moon like a fist pressed into her back. The thought crossed her mind that this was crazy, and how on earth would she explain it to her mother, but then she thought of Arki's soft, cool hand in hers, and kept driving. 

She caught up with the tram on Fitzroy Street, as it turned towards the beach. Considering the height of the tram compared to her car, she couldn't catch a glimpse of anyone in it. The tram chugged along, stopping frequently, and Jenelle was stuck behind it. She increased her following distance a little, so she could see the people getting on and off, and as the tramline ran parallel to the beach, one of them was Arki in her green and white striped t-shirt and bright pink jeans. Jenelle froze, pointlessly, worried that Arki would spot the familiar Kia behind the tram, but Arki didn't look in her direction. Her gaze was fixed on the palm trees and the beach beyond. 

It took Jenelle a few minutes to find a parking spot, and even that was technically a loading zone, before dashing across the road and through the palm trees. She nearly ran into a food delivery cyclist, who yelled at her, but Jenelle barely noticed. She was looking into the distance, across the broad sand beach, at Arki. Arki was standing at the stone wall about ten metres from the water, her shoes in her hand, the moonlight making not only her hair but her skin look silvery white. Before Jenelle called out to her, Arki took a deep breath and started undressing, folding her clothes neatly and placing her shoes on top. Jenelle could only stare at her soft, exposed body, beautiful and unashamed. 

Arki walked down the beach, picking her way between discarded bottles and random scraps of paper. A scruffy man sitting on the stone wall yelled something incoherent at her, but she didn't seem to notice. She reached the water's edge then continued at the same steady pace, as if she was planning to walk all the way to Tasmania. Instead, she walked to waist depth and stood still, her skin shining in the silver light and her hands gently moving through the water. Suddenly, her entire body seemed to quiver and reshape itself, still that ethereal silver, no longer skin and bone but an enormous, gleaming jellyfish. 

Quickly dropping below the water, the jellyfish that had been Arki was visible for a few more moments as she pulsed her way into deeper water, long lacy tendrils drifting behind her. Then she was gone. 

Jenelle took a few involuntary steps towards the water as if she was going to save Arki, ending up against the stone wall near the scruffy guy who had yelled at Arki.

"Did you see that, huh?" he asked Jenelle. "Girl turns into a jellyfish, the things that happen these days!"

"Uh huh," Jenelle replied, still staring out to sea.

"Used to know a guy who could turn into a snake. Shelters wouldn't take him, so he went up north to live full-time as a snake. Nice bloke, but. Wonder if he remembers being a human?"

"He'll have to change back at the new moon." Jenelle couldn't help interjecting fact into the conversation. 

"Did I ask for your opinion? No! No, I didn't! Shut the fuck up!" he shouted at her, and wandered off up the beach towards the pier, leaving Janelle to realise that she wasn't only by herself at night in St Kilda, she was by herself on the night of the full moon.

She hurried to her car, which luckily hadn't got a ticket in the time she'd been away, and wrapped her arms around herself, feeling a strange combination of despair and exhilaration. So, Arki was a shifter. Arki had been lying to her – not lying, she corrected. Evading. And she'd avoided Jenelle's mum, but it would have been easy enough for Arki to look her up online and find out her line of business, and be afraid. Jenelle paced along the rock wall near the car. She had never thought about shifters being afraid of her mum before. All they had to do was register and go to a registered secure zone – which could be in their own home – at the full moon and not shift otherwise. Wasn't that easy enough? Aunt Sophie had no problem with it! 

There were protests every now and then, and online petitions to relax the restrictions on shifters that talked about culture and families and over-policing, but Jenelle had always ignored them. She knew the damage that unregistered or criminal shifter could cause; for the first time she was wondering if it was really worse than the problem other criminals caused? Her dad hadn't been killed by a shifter, after all. 

The boy who'd killed him was a drunk and aggressive and injured 16-year-old who had shoved the ambo treating him so hard that he fell and hit his head on the road, and robbed Jenelle of her dad. Jenelle hadn't thought about the actual incident in years, that the boy who killed her dad had been younger than she was now. She didn't remember the court case, only that nobody was allowed to identify the boy because he was underage. Her home town was small enough that everyone was two degrees of separation at most, and she knew his name was Aaron. His youngest sister had been a few years above Jenelle at primary school, but all Jenelle remembered about her was that her dog would sometimes come to the school gates to wait for her, and that the whole family had moved away after the court case. 

If shifters were so unpredictable and emotional, why hadn't Aunt Sophie taken revenge? Shifted right there in the court and beaten her brother's killer to death? Jenelle shook her head. She didn't understand anything except that the full moon above still filled her with dread. 

Her phone dinged: someone had texted her. It was Amina, the nursing student. Jenelle vaguely remembered exchanging numbers at the start of semester. 

_Did you find Arki? Are you okay?_

Jenelle started typing that she was fine, that Arki was fine, then paused, her fingers hovering over the screen. Was Arki fine? Was she lying for Arki now? She sighed. At the very least, it wasn't her secret to share. 

_We're fine. Thanks for checking!_

_No problem! Be careful!_

Jenelle moved her car closer to the beach, and sat sentinel over Arki's clothes and shoes through the night. There were few people stupid enough to be out under the full moon – most that were out were high or desperate. A few people hit her up for change or cigarettes, but she didn't have either, so they wandered off in search of richer pickings. Cops drove past regularly, but paid no particular attention to one girl sitting quietly, and they seemed to be in a hurry to go elsewhere. Probably a lot of shifter issues to deal with tonight, Jenelle thought, and nearly managed a laugh. What would her mother think if she knew Jenelle was out under the full moon?

The day had been hot and the heat coming up from the concrete kept Jenelle warm enough until about four in the morning, when she went to her car and grabbed a flannel shirt from the back seat. By five, the first joggers and dog walkers were starting to emerge from the shadows into the harsh artificial lights and the weakly creeping dawn, determined to get something done before the day warmed up again. An hour after that, the sun was over the horizon, sending sharp golden rays into Jenelle's eyes, even with her sunglasses on. Arki still hadn't reappeared, but moonset wasn't until nearly eight. An enthusiastic dog ran up to Jenelle, all sand and tongue, trailing a leash, and she patted it, her hands tangling in its curly fur, until its owner caught up. 

"Sorry, love, he gets a bit excited at the beach and he got away from me."

"No probs." Jenelle handed the leash to the woman and laughed at the dog's comical expression of dismay, until she realised she was actually crying. The dog owner handed her a crumpled but clean tissue. 

"He's not worth it, love, believe me. A dog's better company!"

"She, actually," Jenelle choked out, blowing her nose heartily in the tissue. 

"Still true about the dogs!" The woman took the leash and headed off through the palm trees, her dog bouncing about cheerfully. 

By seven, it was full daylight and Jenelle felt that was enough light to brave the public toilets. A council worker was unlocking them and let her in, but she was quickly done and returned to the beach, waiting. She kept thinking about Aunt Sophie, shedding her feathers to turn back into herself, right around now, two hundred kilometres north of here. Every month, she did this, locked herself in and let the change wash through her. Jenelle suddenly wondered how that felt. She'd presumed it would be terrifying but Arki hadn't seemed scared or even hesitant to change. 

At seven thirty, a naked man wandered out of the park, cursing. 

"Stole my bloody clothes again! Fuck 'em!" 

"Hey, you want my shirt?" Jenelle asked, averting her gaze. He was a middle-aged man, his tan making his grey body hair stand out more, and he was shivering. 

"Oh, thanks, kid. You sure? I've got more clothes, just got to go get them." 

"Yeah, it's warming up already. I don't need it." She handed him the shirt. 

"Good on you! One of the council workers gets pissy if he sees me wandering around in the nuddy."

"Are you, um, a shifter?" Jenelle asked. She'd never said that to anyone before.

"Oh, nah, not supposed to talk about that these days. But, if I did happen to be a shifter, let me tell you night is the worst bloody time to be a lizard, and homeless. They've got those nice big ground lights in the park, can curl up next to one of those and do all right. Except for junkies stealing my stuff, but they do that anyway."

"Well, good luck!"

The man buttoned the shirt and wandered off towards the baths. He wasn't tall, but the shirt was barely long enough to cover his backside. No-one had gone near Arki's stuff, but Jenelle wondered what Arki would do if somebody had. 

A few minutes after that, the huge jellyfish sailed gently towards beach on a softly breaking wave. As the water became too shallow, it wobbled against the sandy bottom, lacy crenellations exposed to the air, then collapsed inwards to become Arki again, bent forward in the water. Her hair was clumped together now that it was wet, making her head resemble the complex edges of the jellyfish. She stayed kneeling in the water for a few moments, checking her immediate vicinity, but the dog walkers and surfers were paying no attention to her. It was like she was part of the ocean's edge. When she stood, one of the dog walkers glanced over at her. 

"It's not a nude beach, young lady!" he snapped, walking briskly away. 

Arki didn't respond at all, and looked a little dazed. She walked up the beach – not so far to walk now the tide was in – to her neat pile of clothes, and started getting dressed a few metres from Jenelle, who was sitting on the stone wall. Jenelle kept glancing at her, then looking away, then looking again, her eyes drawn not to Arki's nude body but to her blank face.

"Arki?" Jenelle said, her voice cracking slightly. Her mouth was dry. 

Arki pulled her t-shirt over her head and stared at Jenelle like she'd never seen her before. Then she kept getting dressed, shaking sand off her jeans. When she was fully dressed, she slipped her shoes on and only then did she look again. 

"Why are you here?" she asked, her voice flat.

"I was worried about you, because of the full moon?" Jenelle heard her voice quaver upwards at the end of the sentence and grimaced. She had meant to sound confident, to cover up how nervous she actually was.

Arki stared at her. "You were worried? I thought you were getting evidence!"

Jenelle dropped down to the sand. "For what?"

"For your mother! You know what she does, right? She hunts shifters!" Two angry red spots had appeared on Arki's cheeks. Jenelle couldn't help but hear her mother's voice, reminding her about shifters being irrational around the full moon, but she shook her head like a dog shaking off water. 

"Yeah, but dangerous shifters. Shifters who are hurting people."

Arki kept talking as if she hadn't heard. "I still liked you, though. I shouldn't have, but you helped me, and you're so cute when you laugh and…I recognised your surname and I thought it couldn't be true. That would be too cruel. But it was, and when she visited you, it was definitely her. So I couldn't tell you anything."

Jenelle took Arki's hand. "Please tell me."

"Let's go get something to eat. I'm always starving after I shift." 

"But what if someone took your clothes? What would you do?" Jenelle blurted out.

Arki laughed and sounded more like herself again. "Back in Perth we have someone watching out for us – my dad, usually – but if there isn't, I stay in the water until someone friendly comes past. And there's a clothes drop near here just in case. That's why I came here for my first shift in Melbourne."

"Down that way?" Jenelle pointed after the guy who'd accepted her shirt. 

"Yeah! Got an eyeful this morning, did you?"

Both of them laughed and headed for Jenelle's car. Jenelle had seen the prices at the cafés around here and there was no way they were paying $7 for a piece of toast. 

At the student flats, they got a bowl of cornflakes each and headed up to Arki's room. 

"So, you know I'm a shifter, I guess."

"Yeah. But why wouldn't you register and go to a centre at the full moon? That's what I don't get. Or have your home registered, I guess."

Arki shovelled in her cornflakes. "First up, if you're in a family of shifters and one of you registers, they check out your relatives. So if I registered, I'd pretty much have dobbed in everyone else, too. Sometimes families all decide to register together, if you need a passport or something, but my family can't even agree on what channel to watch on TV of a night. Second, there are no centres in Australia for aquatic shifters apart from dolphins. I've got an uncle up in Darwin who's got saltwater pools on his property, but that's only because of the crocs up there. It's not safe to go in the sea."

"I don't think I've heard of a fully aquatic shifter before. Frogs and dolphins, yeah, but not a jellyfish."

"Well, we shift in the ocean so we don't run into many people! There's heaps of shifter types that don't want to be found."

"Yeah, I can understand why." Jenelle had never spared much thought for the shifters her mother hunted before, always in animal form when she subdued or killed them. They were in an easy-to-understand category of bad people, not like Aunt Sophie who followed the rules. 

"So now you know." Arki looked closed off, but she was biting her bottom lip, waiting for Jenelle's response.

"I'm not about to tell my mother. You're a danger to anyone." Jenelle was surprised at herself, but sure of her decision. Her mother hunted bad people, shifters who committed crimes and hurt people, and Arki might not be following the rules exactly, but she wasn't hurting anyone, either. 

"Thank you. I felt so dumb, when I came out of the water and saw you. Like I'd wrecked everything for my whole family."

"I never want you to be hurt, or feel unsafe," Jenelle told her, putting aside her empty cereal bowl and leaning across Arki's desk to kiss her. Arki kissed her back, with a breath of relief, and everything was good. 

That evening, Jenelle called Aunt Sophie. 

"Jenelle! It's great to hear from you. Is everything okay?"

Aunt Sophie sounded a bit tired, but that wasn't unusual the day after the full moon. 

"Yeah, I'm fine, is it okay to call now?"

"Of course, sweetie. I had the day off today for a good, long nap."

"Can I talk to you about something and you promise you won't tell Mum? I'm not in any trouble or anything."

Aunt Sophie sighed. "Okay, I promise I won't tell her. But I might encourage you to tell her."

"That's fair! But I'm not going to. So, someone I know at uni, they went out last night and I knew it was the full moon…"

"You didn't get bitten?" Aunt Sophie sounded horrified.

"No! I said I wasn't in trouble!" 

"Sorry, go on."

"So I followed them, and they're a shifter. Nothing that is going to hurt anyone, no teeth and there's no way they could break anyone's skin. But Mum already got me the details of all the shifters in my building. I told her not to!"

"I told her the same thing!"

Jenelle smiled. She knew Aunt Sophie had been the right one to call. "But, you probably guessed by now, this student I followed wasn't on the list."

"I did think you might be heading there. And I'm not going to tell Annie that you went wandering around the city on a full moon night, even though I think you should really not do that. Okay, first up, did the student have somewhere safe to go? If they didn't, I'll send you a link to a site that has a bunch of no-questions-asked places for shifters to do their thing."

"Won't hunters show up there?" Jenelle was honestly a bit horrified that the information was so openly available.

"No! A hunter can't go onto private property where the shifter has permission to be. There have been some cases where younger hunters have tried to monitor shifter houses, but the cops and the older hunters put a stop to it – better to have people unregistered but safe than forcing them to shift wherever they can find a place. A lot of this started up in the 80s and 90s, before you were born. You don't know what it used to be like."

Jenelle made a face. She didn't think that some random house sounded great for Arki. Unless there happened to be a saltwater pool like Arki's uncle's place in Darwin, of course. "Okay, but I'm serious that they couldn't possibly hurt anyone while shifted."

"Jenelle, that might not be true. Even if they're a moth or something, a hunter comes after them and they end up in a fight after moonset…shifters have a lot of extra strength around the full moon, including in human form, and our judgement isn't the best. Accidents happen."

"No, not in this case. I mean, I agree that they would be safer in a shifter house, but they're a very gentle person."

"Jenelle." Aunt Sophie's voice took on a hard tone, and Jenelle automatically sat up straight. 

"It's true," Jenelle said, somewhat truculently, which annoyed her, as they'd been having a perfectly adult conversation before that. 

"I'm going to tell you about my mother, your grandmother, okay? So you understand the problem here."

Jenelle thought about that for a moment. She'd only been a baby when her grandmother died, and didn't remember her in person, only as an older, short-haired version of Aunt Sophie in photos. The main thing she'd heard about her was a lecture from her mum about taking it easy with booze, since her grandmother had had a problem with it. "Okay, but I kind of assumed it was drunk driving or something."

"She was a drinker, yes, but that's not how she died. Well, sort of." Aunt Sophie's voice wobbled a little, then she coughed and sounded like herself again. "She always drank a lot, which was one of the reasons why your dad and I never drank at all. But she never got in the car drunk. She never wanted to hurt anyone. I think she felt guilty about me being attacked by the shifter when I was little."

Jenelle knew that story: toddler Sophie had escaped from the house one night and wandered off down to the lake, where she had been attacked by a heron shifter. The shifter had gone to prison, but that was before the post-exposure prophylaxis had been invented – not that it always worked even now – and sure enough, at the next full moon Sophie had changed into a cygnet. They'd followed medical procedures and placed her in a secure crib at the hospital, so she hadn't hurt anyone, and Sophie had gone to the hospital for shifting every month until a few years later when her older brother, Jenelle's dad, had fixed up the secure room for her. People who inherited shifting from their parents didn't tend to start shifting until puberty, but people who were bitten young, like Sophie, had to go through the whole thing in childhood, too young to understand the dangers. 

"She should have made sure you couldn't get you out of the house!"

"She was a single mum working long hours, and people were a lot more casual about locking the doors then." Aunt Sophie had given Jenelle the same answer when she'd been outraged previously, and Jenelle had to accept it. If Aunt Sophie wasn't angry about it, Jenelle couldn't truly be, either. 

Aunt Sophie took a deep breath and continued. "So, when I was fourteen and your dad was twenty-two, our mum had been drinking more, and one night she unlocked the door to the secure room. Maybe she forgot what night it was, or she thought I wouldn't hurt her, but obviously, you can't barge in on a shifter on a full moon. I pecked and beat her to death."

Jenelle gasped. "I'm so sorry! You don't remember doing that, right?"

"I don't remember what happened, but I do remember finding her body when I shifted back in the morning. It was awful. I've never forgotten it. I could never forget it."

"Oh, Aunt Sophie, I'm so sorry that happened to you!"

"But this is what I mean, Jenelle. A shifter might think they're safe! That doesn't mean it's true when other people might be around. I knew you'd never go unlocking doors, but I wouldn't have had just anyone staying in my house. I dumped my first boyfriend after he got drunk at a party. He wasn't an alcoholic, but I couldn't stand it. So if this shifter thinks they're safe, that's probably not true, not if they're shifting out in the open, not if a fellow student could find them. Yes, Jenelle," she said, forestalling Jenelle's protest, "Yes, even you. You're not your mother. If they've recently moved to Melbourne they might not have a place to go. Give them the site so they can be safer next time. So everyone can, okay?"

"Okay," Jenelle agreed, but she was doubtful that Arki would listen. She had seemed so confident about her shifting, and she'd been doing it for a long time in company. "I don't know how they'll take it, though."

"Well, send them an anonymous email or write it down and put it under their door. It doesn't have to come directly from you. Probably better that it doesn't."

"Thank you for telling me about Grandma. It helps me understand things better."

"And what happened to your dad – I mean, it was nothing to do with shifters, just some aggro kid – but that kind of thing is more likely around the full moon. Irrational feelings, paranoia, and combined with greater strength, it can be a real problem. So don't try to restrain them or stop them, but protect yourself."

"I will. I promise. And thank you for telling me the truth, really."

"I wanted to tell you but there was never a right time. I guess this was it!" Aunt Sophie laughed, and that was more familiar. 

Jenelle did what she said and passed on the website to Arki. 

Arki laughed it off. "Oh, no, I'm not going to someone's weird suburban jail to shift. Even if they have a pool and even if it's the right kind of water, that's asking for trouble. People like that, sometimes they're okay, and sometimes they ask for favours. My mum got stuck inland once and went to one of these places, and they called her up for months after, hassling her for money or for the names of other shifters. She had to change her phone number."

"That sucks! But aren't they shifters themselves?"

"Sure, but that doesn't stop them preying on their own community. Lots of places won't give shifters jobs and you can't ask in most occupations but it's not hard to work out in anything other than strict 9-to-5, no travel."

Jenelle thought about that guy at her nightfill job and how easy it had been to check his schedule. "Yeah, I know what you mean."

"And then there's hunters like your mum after them and the best outcome there is that they register. Or go bush for a while, but that's hard too."

Jenelle made a face. "We weren't going to talk about my mum's job."

"You wanted me to go to a shifter shelter, it's relevant."

"I guess." She knew she was making that face, so Jenelle consciously relaxed her expression. "Ugh, it's so random that you're a shifter!"

Arki flopped on the bed on her back. "Maybe you're a tentacle chaser!" she giggled, and brushed her fingers along Jenelle's leg. 

Jenelle laughed too, and caught Arki's hand. "Is that seriously a thing?"

"Who knows? There's a fetish out there for everyone!" Arki was doing a unit on psychology in media communication and learning a lot about this kind of thing right now. 

"Okay, I guess I'm into it," Jenelle agreed, and flopped down next to Arki to kiss her. "Mmm, tentacles for everyone."

Jenelle tried a few more times to bring up the idea of a shifter shelter to Arki, but she eventually told Jenelle not to mention it again, so Jenelle didn't. She couldn't see how Arki would be able to harm someone out in the ocean, especially as Arki had since talked to her family in Perth and found out about a more isolated beach where she could shift. 

"If you don't mind driving me there," Arki told Jenelle. "It's down on the Mornington Peninsula, which is a hassle, but the next nearest is out past Geelong. I'll split the petrol with you."

"Yeah, no problem." Jenelle giggled. "I just realised, my work schedule is going to start to look like a shifter's too!" 

The next full moon, in April, saw them headed off down the peninsula in the Kia, leaving plenty of time before moonrise. Arki was a bit cranky, but nothing as dramatic as Aunt Sophie seemed to talk about. At least there were no tests to study for this week, because that hadn't helped last time!

Amina the nursing student had been studying in the common room on their floor when Jenelle came up in the lift with an armful of snacks, two nights ago.

"Are you having a party?" she asked, smiling.

"Uh, no, I'm getting stuff from work so it doesn't get thrown out. Do you want anything?" Jenelle dumped it on the table where Amina could see it. 

"Thanks!" Amina quickly rifled through to check for anything halal and ended up with a few packets of noodles and a big bag of Doritos. "We should probably organise a study party the week before exams."

Jenelle winced. "That's only what, another five weeks?"

"We're doing some chemistry revision Saturday morning. Fay's cousin is doing third year Science and she's coming over to help." 

"Thanks, I'd love to, but I've got something else on Friday night, so I'm not going to be much use Saturday morning."

Amina smiled. "Okay, well, thanks for the snacks."

Jenelle had packed plenty of slightly out-of-date snacks from her job, a beach towel, and a warm jumper for herself, since this beach was supposed to be windy. It was considerably cooler than last month, but nowhere near cold in the mid-afternoon. They were at the front edge of rush hour and Jenelle was glad they hadn't left it any later, surrounded by oversized 4WDs stuffed with tired school kids. 

"Man, I think those things could run over the top of us and not even notice," Arki said as they were boxed in at a traffic light. 

"It's weird to see them so clean. Where I'm from, they're all dirt up to the windows!"

Arki laughed. "My family's car might look clean, but there's a ton of sand inside. My dad gave up on vacuuming it eventually. Not just because of the shifting, we practically grew up at the beach. My brother had this dream of being a professional surfer before he realised he'd have to travel around the world, and to do that he'd have to get a passport and have the blood test and everything."

"That so sucks. They should only do that if your travel is going to overlap with the full moon or something."

"Some countries don't allow shifters in at all, so everywhere had to make it part of getting a passport. My parents had passports because they got them before the testing, they travelled around Europe, but my mum couldn't renew after that, so my dad didn't either. It's complicated, with international stuff, I guess."

Jenelle laughed. "Not that I've ever been overseas, either! The furthest I've been is the Gold Coast. Oh, and a school trip to Uluru in Year 10. That's probably further away?"

"Yeah, well, I don't think a random beach in Victoria is going to match up to those. It's supposed to be deserted because it's crap for surfing and dangerous for swimming. Not that surfers have ever given me any trouble. Maybe I have a vibe!"

"Maybe they just don't want to be stung!" 

"Ha, that too."

The beach was indeed as windy and empty as promised, and only a few minutes walk from the car park to the shore through fenced-off dunes. There were steep cliffs at either end of the small beach. Recent human and dog footprints on the sand showed that it wasn't entirely deserted all the time, even if it was now. 

"Are you sure you're going to be okay?" Arki asked Jenelle. "It's totally isolated here. You'll go up to the car once I've shifted, won't you?"

"I suppose that will be better. I'll take your clothes up with me and bring them down again in the morning. Okay, I'm going to check my alarm." Jenelle fiddled with her phone. Moonset, and the earliest Arki could change back, was at 6:13am, so she set it for 6. "Man, if I win Tattslotto I'm totally going to buy our own beach, with a house overlooking the water so I can watch you swim in and out."

"Do you even buy tickets?"

"Well, okay, no…but maybe I should start!" 

Arki was starting to pay more attention to the choppy water than to Jenelle, though moonrise was still ten minutes away. She stripped off her clothes, putting them neatly in a shopping bag, and stretched out her arms behind her. "Okay. See you on the other side." She turned suddenly and kissed Jenelle, just once, then ran down to the water and in, without flinching at the sudden cold. The beach had a sudden drop-off fairly close to shore, so she didn't have to go far to be in deep water. Jenelle watched the light shimmer on her pale hair, and then on her jellyfish form as she transformed and swam out into the bay. 

Now that Jenelle knew what was going on, waiting for her shifter girlfriend was frankly kind of boring. She couldn't see anything happening, despite the clear night bright moonlight, so as the wind started to chill her skin, she turned and walked up the beach through the dunes to her car. From the top of the dunes, she thought she saw the great transparent shape of Arki out in the water, for a moment, but it might have been an optical illusion. 

Jenelle put the seat of the Kia right back so she had plenty of room to study – Amina's comment about five weeks left had been alarming – but she soon nodded off over her screen and gave up on the whole idea, putting on her jumper, reclining the seat, and going to sleep instead. 

When Jenelle woke up, she thought she must be dreaming. Her mother was knocking on her window. She blinked a few times and rubbed her eyes, but no, she was still there.

"Mum?" she said, her voice raspy with sleep. It was still dark outside, but the one streetlight in the car park let her see enough. Her mum was wearing her professional hunting gear, with the helmet, throat guard and Kevlar vest. "Mum!" 

Throwing open the door, Jenelle grabbed her mum's wrist in great alarm. With the door open, she could see her mum's beaten-up ute parked nearby. The spotlight was switched off but the tarp was thrown aside to expose the rifle rack. 

"Mum, what are you doing here? Did Aunt Sophie-"

"Aunt Sophie? I haven't heard anything from her. I'm here because you're in danger, and you should know better. That girl Arki Rudd is an unregistered shifter and it's the full moon. What the hell did you think you'd be doing here with her?"

Jenelle got fully out of the car and stood over her mother, despite Jenelle being in an old jumper and leggings, and her mother in full combat gear. "She's my girlfriend, and I'm guarding her clothes and giving her a lift to the city in the morning."

"That's ridiculous. Apart from the actual danger that you, of all people, should understand, you could be in legal trouble for aiding an unregistered shifter."

"Maybe that's wrong," Jenelle said, to her own surprise. 

"Jenelle, I don't want to hurt this girl, but I am going to gather evidence and present it to the police."

"Yeah, because you get paid for that, right?"

Her mum put a hand on Jenelle's shoulder and pushed her down into her seat. "Stay here until I'm done. I'll take her clothes down to her if you insist, but that's it." 

Jenelle stayed seated. "Don't do this, Mum."

"Stay here." She headed over to the ute and switched on the spotlight. It shone down the dunes all the way to the beach. With another hard look at Jenelle, she marched down the track towards the beach. At least her rifles were both still in their rack, Jenelle thought, still stunned by this turn of events. She realised that Arki's bag of clothes was still on the backseat with Jenelle's tablet, and reached over to grab the bag before heading after her mum. 

The track in the dunes wound its way down, in and out of the beam of light, and it wasn't until she'd stumbled all the way to the beach that Jenelle remembered that she could have used her phone for light. 

"Mum, it's me!" she called out as she left the cover of the dunes, not wanting to be accidentally tasered or something. Her mum might not have her rifles, but that didn't mean she wasn't armed and alert. 

"Go back to the car, Jen!" She was standing just outside the spotlit area of sand and water, protected by the high contrast with the darkness. 

"No! Tell me how you knew about Arki! It can't be a coincidence! How many times have you told me about hunters working in their own areas? You're two hundred kilometres out of yours!"

Annie sighed. "A girl from your course called me. She was worried about you."

"Amina? Dammit, it's none of her business!" 

"The poor girl is studying here because she's going to have to support her parents on her own. Her brother was turned into a shifter in his teens and can't find a good job anywhere in Malaysia now! I'd say it's very much her business. She's trying to look out for you, and I'm pleased that she did."

"You don't know anything about Arki's family, Mum. They've practised shifting. They're jellyfish. They change at isolated beaches like this one. They can't bite anyone. How is that a threat?"

"It's a threat because you don't know that for sure! By what you said earlier, I'm guessing you spoke to Sophie about this?"

"I made her promise not to tell you. She wasn't happy about it, at all."

"So did she tell you about your grandmother?"

"Yeah. But this is different."

Her mum rolled her eyes. "You don't know how many times I've heard that."

The eye-roll really made Jenelle angry. "And every shifter is exactly the same, right? You wouldn't say that about anyone else! You were totally fine with me being gay, how can you be so prejudiced about shifters? Arki's been shifting since she was eleven, and her family has been shifting for generations before that, with no problems at all."

"That she's told you about."

"You always do your research. You'd tell me if there was a specific incident you could track to her family, wouldn't you?" Jenelle didn't argue with her mum very often, and it felt strange to be doing it now, but she couldn't give in. Not when it was this important.

"All right, no, I couldn't find anything. That doesn't change the fact that she's breaking the law, Jenelle." 

The faint yellow-grey light of false dawn was on the horizon, and the moon was close to setting. Annie clipped her phone onto her vest and started recording, the camera facing the sea where Arki still swam, oblivious to the danger.

Jenelle put her hand over the camera. "Stop it, Mum. I won't let you report her."

"This is my job. Go back to your car and stay out of the way." She stepped away from Jenelle and continued filming. 

"It's not your job anymore! You're in corporate security now." Jenelle moved closer to the water and stood right in front of the camera, blocking the shot.

"Jenelle, I'm telling you, go back to the car."

"No!" Jenelle walked backwards and felt the water start to lap at her sneakers. 

"Get out of the water!" 

"No!"

Annie ran down to Jenelle and grabbed her by the arm. Jenelle twisted out of her grip and took a defensive stance, all those years of karate that her mum had insisted on suddenly coming to the fore. The waves washed at her ankles, her feet sinking into the wet sand, and she knew she couldn't be moved.

Annie tugged at her, obviously unwilling to use real force on her own daughter, and Jenelle held her stance. 

"Please, Jenelle. You can't stop me doing my job. She's breaking the law and endangering everyone around her. Endangering you."

"Everything was fine until you got here." Jenelle walked backwards, now knee-deep. She wouldn't move back further because she knew the steep drop-off into deep water must be close, but she wasn't getting out of the water either. It was cold, but she was flushed with anger and that was keeping her warm. 

Jenelle couldn't understand the expression on her mum's face. Her eyes were wide and the whites showed under her dark irises. 

"Please, Jenelle. Please get out of the water."

"No."

"Please!" It was panic, and Jenelle couldn't understand that. Her mum never panicked, not ever. 

"If you put your camera away and go back to the car, I'll come out."

Annie glanced down at the phone as if she'd forgotten it was there, then pulled it off and shoved it in a pocket. "Okay, look, it's off." She reached out and grabbed Jenelle's arm again, trying to tug her forward. Jenelle didn't move.

"Now go up to the car, Mum." 

She let go and walked to the water's edge, but there Annie squared her shoulders and turned around, fighting off panic with obvious effort. "Come on, Jenelle. You're not proving anything by standing there. You've only known this girl for two months. I'm your mother. You have always trusted me."

"It's not about trust. You're doing the wrong thing. Would you do this to Aunt Sophie?"

"You know I would, and she knows it too. There's consequences to being a shifter, and she accepts that."

Jenelle took a deep breath. "Okay. You want to talk about consequences? Here's one: if you report Arki, I will never speak to you again. I won't be your daughter anymore. I love you, Mum, but this is wrong."

"Jenelle. Come out of the water, please. I won't make a report."

"Thank you." Jenelle finally relaxed her stance and started to walk forward, wading through the water with big steps to stop the incoming tide pushing her over. Then something brushed against her calf. She shook her leg on the next step, assuming seaweed or maybe plastic, but it didn't come loose. When she took one more long step, it tugged for a moment then pulled free and she walked up onto the beach. The moon was setting, finally, and Arki should be here soon. 

Her mum grabbed and hugged her as she emerged from the water. "Oh, Jen, good girl."

"You're going to stick to your promise, though? Right?" 

"Yes. I'm not happy about it, but I did promise. Jenelle, what's that on your leg?"

Jenelle looked down and saw a long strand of transparent plastic stuck to her calf. "Oh, I think it stuck to me in the water." She bent down and tried to pull it off, but the moment she touched it her fingers burned they were on fire. "Ow!" 

Her mum dropped to one knee and, with her gloved hands, pulled it off Jenelle's leg and dropped it on the sand. "That's a jellyfish tentacle."

"Ow, shit, my leg is burning, too!" Jenelle yanked her leggings up to see a line of bright red welts along her calf. "Ow, mum, this hurts!" 

"Jenelle?" It was Arki's voice. "Why is your mum here?"

"It's okay, it's okay," Jenelle called back, turning around to see Arki standing in the shallows right where Jenelle had been. "She's not going to report you or anything. I've got your clothes here." She held out the bag, and Arki came over to collect it. 

"Your leg – what happened?" 

"I think something must have stung me in the water," Jenelle said, then realised what she was saying. "Oh shit, was it you?"

"I don't know!" 

"The skin's broken," Annie said, professional mode in place. "You'll need post-exposure medication."

"Fuck," Jenelle said, and her mum didn't even tell her off. "Fuck, then I'll have to report it. I'm so sorry, I was trying to stop my mum filming you and reporting you."

Arki was quickly getting dressed. "No, it's okay, if you have to report me you have to. It's my fault. Look at the area those welts cover – a regular jellyfish tentacle isn't that wide. It must have been me." 

"Shit, ow, this really hurts!" Jenelle had been determined not to cry in front of her mum, but her leg was burning, along with her fingers where she'd touched the stings. 

"Do you have any hot water? Or vinegar?" Arki asked Annie, urgently. 

"No, we live inland! No jellyfish! Oh wait, yes, I have a thermos of tea in the car? Will that do?"

"Go get it!" Arki told her, and, amazingly, Annie ran up the dunes to the car. Jenelle sat down on the wet sand and Arki hugged her. "You'll be okay, you'll be okay."

"I don't care about the shifter stuff!" Jenelle curled up against Arki. "Just, make it stop!"

Annie raced down the dune with a first aid kit and her old tartan thermos. Arki took the thermos, stuck her finger in it to check the temperature, and then tipped the hot tea over Jenelle's leg. It was painfully hot, but the stinging and burning eased almost immediately. The last of the tea went over Jenelle's fingers and helped with the pain there. 

"Okay, that should feel better. My sting isn't dangerous, only painful."

"Of course it's dangerous!" Annie argued. "You were transformed at the full moon, you're highly infectious!" 

Arki's face crumpled and she started to cry along with Jenelle. "I didn't mean it! I'm so sorry! But, we can go get the injection and you'll be okay, I'm sure. It's not like I have blood in that form, I'm mostly water!"

"Are you really going to take my daughter to have the injection?" Annie asked, "Even though you'll have to register?"

Arki sniffed, then composed herself. "Yes! If you haven't grown up in a shifter family, it's hard to get used to it. You don't have your people around you. My cousin Kyla, on my dad's side – she and her boyfriend both got attacked by a bull shifter, and it was so hard for her. And him, too, I guess. I mean, she died in a car accident, but she'd told us she was going to break up with him, so we all thought he killed her, but we didn't have proof. But being shifters was awful for them! For me, growing up a shifter, it was normal. For Jenelle, I'll register. There's got to be somewhere with a pool where I can go."

"No need," Annie said, and took a bright green plastic box out of her first aid kit. "I'm licensed to carry the post-exposure prophylactic."

"Don't you have to register its use?" Arki asked. 

"Yeah, but if you girls are sensible, this won't happen again next month or the month after, and I'll be able to call it out of date and dispose of it." She took the cap off the injector pen and quickly pressed it into Jenelle's thigh. When the needle was pulled out and recapped, Jenelle finally remembered her first aid training and rubbed the area firmly. 

With the pain of the stings fading, Jenelle started to feel a little better. Arki and Annie checked out her leg for stings still stuck in there and pulled a couple out with Annie's first aid tweezers. 

"Okay, I guess I should do a proper introduction. Mum, this is my girlfriend Arki. Arki, this is my mum."

"Call me Annie," she said. 

"I'm still scared of you," Arki replied, bluntly. "You have a certain reputation."

Annie shrugged, untroubled. "Have you ever tried reasoning with a shifter during a full moon? Most of my job was a lot more boring – checking registered shifting places for compliance, that kind of thing. It's what I'm going to tell your concerned friend Amina – that you were paid to stand guard for a shifter. But people don't remember that part of my job. It's the full moon parts that make the press."

"Because you're out there killing people."

"People who are an immediate danger to others, sure. This-" Annie waved her hand to encompass Arki, the beach, Jenelle – "This is on me. If I hadn't come and frightened Jenelle, none of this would have happened. You have it worked out. You're from a shifter family."

Jenelle looked up at her mum. "You mean, you've never hunted anyone from a shifter family?"

"Nope. Mostly idiots who think they'll be fine on their own. A couple who broke free of insufficient restraints."

"Well, the laws don't exactly encourage us to reach out to recently changed shifters!" Arki argued. 

Annie shrugged. "Then I guess it's up to you kids to make things different. Industries don't just give up and die."

Jenelle reached up and put a hand on her mum's arm. "But you'll help us, won't you, Mum?"

Annie sighed. "Yeah, I will. There's a lot of idiots and yahoos on my side of things. It wouldn't hurt to get them out of the biz."

Jenelle sat quietly on the beach, her backside getting wet from the sand, and took a deep breath. With her mum and Arki on the same side, things were going to be okay.


End file.
